Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now
Heart of Darkness

The film version of Conrad's famous novel Heart of Darkness by Francis Ford Coppola entitled Apocalypse Now has been acclaimed as an important and insightful film. The novel is based on the early colonial invasion of Africa, while the film version deals with the context and the reality of the Vietnam War.

However, the film follows the major themes and underlying meaning of the novel and in fact expands on the novel by bringing these themes into the modern context. Coppola's film is essentially successful in capturing the atmosphere of the book and in portraying the conflict between good and evil in the human heart -- especially with regards to the character of Kurtz.

It should be noted that Coppola saw the film as much more than just another movie about the Vietnam conflict and the horror and confusion of that war. At the Cannes…...

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References

APOCALPYSE NOW REDUX. Produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola,

written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, photography by Vittorio

Storaro, music by Carmine Coppola and Francis Ford Coppola distributed by Miramax Films. Running time: 3 hours, 17 mins.

Conrad, J, ( 1946) Youth: Heart of Darkness, the End of the Tether; Three Stories. London J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd.

Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now
Comparing and Contrasting Coppola's Apocalypse with Conrad's Darkness

hile Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now is framed by the music of The Doors, Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, upon which the film is based, uses the narration of Marlow as a framing device for the murky tale of the "horror" that hides in the human heart. The difference in framing devices has more to do with the difference in medium and inspiration than it does in overall meaning (Greiff 188) -- and yet the music of The Doors provides a much bleaker context for the narrative that Coppola explores in Apocalypse Now than the stylishly literary and ultimately ironic narrative woven by Conrad. Coppola, in fact, updated the narrative in a number of other ways -- namely in the shift of time and setting from the Congo at the turn of the century to the Mekong…...

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Works Cited

Ebert, Roger. "Apocalypse Now (1979)." Chicago Sun-Times. 1999. Web. 5 Oct

2012.

Greiff, Louis K. "Solider, Sailor, Surfer, Chef: Conrad's Ethics and the Margins of Apocalypse Now." Literature/Film Quarterly, no. 3 (1992): 188-198. Print.

Jean-Aubry, Gerard. The Sea Dreamer. NY: Doubleday, 1957. Print.

Similarities among the Characters

The Russian trader in the "Heart of Darkness" approximates Enoch in "Things Fall Apart" in providing the spark the leads to the explosion of the narratives. The Russian trader tells Marlow about Kurtz's secret, which leads Marlow to confront Kurtz. Enoch violates sacred rites that result in the burning of the church, the imprisonment of tribal leaders, Okonkwo's rebellion and suicide. The general manager in Conrad's novel approximates the district commissioner in Achebe's novel. The pilgrims and cannibals in Conrad's work are also a parallel of Achebe's court messengers, who decide to obey white colonizers. Marlow can be compared with Mr. rown in their kindness and tolerance of the natives, despite their superiority to these natives. And Kurtz's African mistress in Conrad's work is comparable to Okonkwo's favorite daughter, Ezinma, in Achebe's novel and as the only female characters of significance to the works.

Comparison etween the Authors…...

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. 1st Anchor Books, September 1994

2. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Paperback. Hesperus Press, September 1, 2000

Heart of Darkness
In Conrad's Heart of Darkness the author reveals the theme of mans natural inclination toward savagery by using diction and imagery. The author's descriptive detail paints a picture of an unfriendly and dangerous environment populated by uncivilized natives as the party makes its way into the interior of Africa on the Congo River. Throughout the second part of this story Conrad is developing the theme of civilization being left behind as the Jungle grows dark and the party is attacked by native Africans. The men are entering a new world where the rules of the society they know do not apply and the dark side of human nature is being revealed.

Marlow describes the strange world of plants, animals, and silence they encounter as they go up river in these terms, "It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with…...

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Works Cited

Conrad, Joseph. "Heart of Darkness." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Eds R.V. Cassill and Richard Bausch. New York W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2000, 109-171. Print.

e must be cautious yet. The district is closed to us for a time. Deplorable! Upon the whole, the trade will suffer. […] Look how precarious the position is (Conrad 1902, p. 143).
Otherwise, he notes, the ivory Kurtz collected is perfectly good. But in the face of months of strange rumors, the Company's refusal to check his activities earlier amounts to moral complicity; as Phil Zimbardo notes in a different context, management "effectively gave [Kurtz] permission to do these things, and [he] knew nobody was ever going to come [up the river]" to take that permission away (Zimbardo 2008).

In this, the system itself becomes the mechanism through which Kurtz becomes corrupt. Conrad hints at the moral rot spreading beneath the Company's apparently well-ordered surface operations throughout Heart of Darkness. The doctor impassively tests his "theories" about those going upriver rather than attempting to dissuade them from the journey; the…...

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Works Cited

Conrad, J. (1902). Heart of darkness & The secret sharer. New York, NY: Signet Books.

Gerrig, R.J., Zimbardo, P.G., Desmarais, S., & Ivanco, T. (2009). Psychology and life, 19th edition. Toronto, ON: Pearson Education Canada.

Zimbardo, P.G. (2008). Philip Zimbardo shows how people become monsters…or heroes. Retrieved March 23, 2010, from TED Conferences website:  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html .

Africa suffers from both political instability and economic devastation that has been at least partially brought upon it by European imposition. Europe created nation-states based upon arbitrary combinations of tribes, and undid ancient methods of farming and tribal ways to create markets for European goods. Colonialism never created a sustainable economic system for the good of Africans. Culturally, the fusion of Christianity and European mores and Africa's tribes has created more discord than harmony.
Perhaps the saddest legacy of Africa is its invisibility -- the narrative voice of Heart of Darkness ends with Marlow telling a lie, just as the American media seldom shines a searing light upon the injustices in Rwanda and Darfur until it is too late. Today, America's Marlows still show more interest in 'our name' -- the implications of African policy for the West, such as the current AIDS epidemic in the region. Africa still suffers…...

This is because Conrad's vivid descriptions of the wild African jungles and meadows made it known that much of Africa remained untouched by human hands. The second term to be added is the adjective rich; even though this may be contradictory to the term poverty mentioned earlier, it is actually used here to mean the untapped and abundant natural resources that the continent possesses. These resources, one of which is ivory as mentioned in the novel, have largely remained out of reach of humans for a long time. This is why it can be said that Africa is rich (in resources).
From the novel "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe, I found that I would have to add and change a few more terms. The first term I would include is the adjective complex. This term would be used to replace the term I used earlier in describing Africa, which…...

There is more going on between Marlow and Kurtz because of Marlow's desire to know Kurtz. There is a curiosity there that allows Marlow to be open to Kurtz on some level. He is fascinated by his success and searches him out. He may begin his journey as a man looking for another man but Gillon maintains that Marlow's search represents a "search for truth" (Gillon). This search reveals the depth of the evil he discovers. John Jervis aggress with this notion, adding that the novel explores darkness. He states that "Africa is dark even in the sunlight; but the darkness is the darkness of the primeval, not the darkness of evil" (Jervis 68). He also explains that Africa, in all her splendor, is "voiceless" (68) and beyond good or evil. Africa "just is" (68), according to Jervis and she "may even have been the instrument of Kurtz's downfall;…...

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Works Cited

Bowers, Terence. "Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Dante's Inferno." The Explicator. 2004.

62.2. GALE Resource Database. Site Accessed July 26, 2009.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Cassill, R.V. Ed.

1981.

It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity -- like yours -- the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar." (onrad 105).
This indicates a gradual shift of viewpoint from the Western, or civilized, to the uncivilized. In this, Marlow's viewpoint shift foreshadows his meeting with Kurtz. The latter is iconic of the completion of this viewpoint. The reader is therefore prepared for an increased contact with darkness as Marlow travels deeper into the physical darkness of Africa towards the ultimate heart of the matter personified in Kurtz. The decay of Kurtz's station indicates not only his absence, but also his lingering influence during the time when he was present at the station. It is central to the novel to note that the barbarian nature of the…...

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Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. University of Virginia, 1999. Online version:

 http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/ConDark.html 

Mohring, Brent. "Heart of Darkness." 2007. http://caxton.stockton.edu/brent/stories/storyReader$19

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad [...] roll of women in this novella. How are they represented? What sort of comments are made about women "in general"? Women in "Heart of Darkness" play an important and distinctive role in the tale. They represent civilization, and the lack of it far away in the jungles of Africa, where the "darkness" lies in wait for every man.
WOMEN IN HEART OF DARKNESS

Women in the novel "The Heart of Darkness" seem to fill a very small role, but in actuality, the women in the novel serve quite a vital purpose. At first, "The Intended" seems enigmatic and stereotypical of women at the turn of the 20th century. She is "out of it," and the men believe she should remain so. "Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it -- completely. They -- the women I mean -- are…...

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Bibliography

Conrad, Joseph. Youth: Heart of Darkness, the End of the Tether; Three Stories. London J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1946.

Conrad explores the vileness of imperialism in a cloak of goodwill with various approaches to the way in which Europeans and Africans are viewed in this novel.
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad which has a strong autobiographical tone and discusses the dark side of imperialism with an underlying irony. Heart of Darkness was based on Conrad's journey to the elgian Congo in 1890 where the Africans were being exploited by the rich and powerful; it rummages into complex themes of how darkness and evil are so closely intertwined with imperialism (Arslanoglu). However, we cannot consider this novel an autobiographical account; rather, it raises and discusses the issue of good and evil in mankind.

Along other various themes in the novel, the underlying and strong theme is that of colonialism. How humans can so mercilessly make other people their slaves just because they have a different complexion or…...

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Bibliography

1. Arslanoglu, Erin. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: Review. PDF file.

2. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London, England: Penguin, 1908. Print.

3. Heart of Darkness. Pdf file.

4. Hojjat, Mahdi Bakhtiari and Daronkolae, Esmaeil Najar. "By the Name of Nature but Against Nature: An Ecocritical Study of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies 1.3 (2013): 108-114. PDF file.

They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now -- nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom" (Conrad). These men were literally being worked to death to create a railroad that would only benefit the Europeans trying to bring goods to the coast to ship back to Europe. The Europeans did not care about the blacks and their culture, their families, and their way of life. They just saw them as something in the way of progress, like the jungle. Again, this shows the theme of the heart of darkness, and that heart is the evil and greed in the hearts of men who will treat people that way.
Conrad also shows how the natives' culture was changing because of the European influences and forced work and relocation. He writes, "On some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums,…...

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References

Conrad, Joseph. "Heart of Darkness." Youth and Two Other Stories. Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1927. 2005. 21 July 2005.  http://www.boondocksnet.com/congo/congo_heart.html

Kurtz is driven to madness by the imperialistic attitudes of those around him, and his own greed for money via the ivory trade. He spends his life in the jungle, searching for ivory and coming to know the natives, who think he is a white God. He represents the very worst of imperialism, because he comes to know and understand the natives, and still he takes advantage of them. He loves their hero worship, and he trades for ivory with them, but he is still using them and leaving them with little or nothing in return, just as the Belgians leave the Congo when they have taken all they can get from the country and the people.
The novel also illustrates how jaded the Europeans are, and how they take the natives for granted, seeing them as little more than animals or "things" to serve them. This is illustrated when…...

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References

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Dover Publications, 1990.

Parry, Benita. "2 the Moment and Afterlife of Heart of Darkness." Conrad in the Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Approaches and Perspectives. Ed. Carola M. Kaplan, Peter Mallios, and Andrea White. New York: Routledge, 2005. 39-53.

He makes the reader aware of these great changes by showing the wild backcountry, how the natives live, and how they are reacting to the Belgians in their midst. The backcountry Marlow travels through is sinister, and the natives become more sinister as well. These natives represent the evil they are fighting against and graphically illustrate what it has done to their culture. They have become violent and frightening because of the violence and fear tactics that have been used against them.
In addition, Kurtz goes mad at his outpost in the jungle, and his madness is a result of the imperialistic attitudes of the Europeans. A companion of Kurtz says of him, "You don't know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz'" (Conrad 54). He spends years wandering in the jungle, trading for ivory, and learning about the natives and their customs, and he comes to be…...

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References

Bloom, Harold, ed. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Dover Publications, 1990.

Heart of DarknessJoseph Conrads Heart of Darkness was first published in 1899, and can be seen as an early example of modernist literature because it represents some of the moral ambiguity that characterized the modern world at turn of the 20th century. Conrads narrative centers on a kind of existential foray into the darkest depths of human nature, under the shadow of colonialism, and the horror that can be found within the human heart when humanity loses its spiritual purpose.At its core, Heart of Darkness is an examination of a societynot just a man (Kurtz)that has lost its way. Of course, Kurtz is the focal point eventuallybut the story is a dissection of a Western culture that has given over its honor, integrity, decency, pride, purpose, and spirituality for an ugly, grimy, sordid materialistic conquest that yields up nothing but phantoms and goblins. To portray this symbolically, Conrad sets his…...

In order to really understand resistance in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it is important to look at all of the characters and not just the highlighted European males, such as the protagonist Marlowe, that sit at the center of the story.  That is because resistance is the undercurrent behind all of the action in the story.  The main characters are always acting against the threat of resistance by the African people who are often portrayed as victims, but are consistently offering resistance to the colonizers, as evidenced by the arrow attack by the natives on the ship. ....

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The Roles of Traditional Leaders and Chiefs in the Gold Coast: A Literary Exploration

Throughout the history of the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), traditional leaders and chiefs have played a pivotal role in the social, political, and cultural life of the region. From the pre-colonial era to the post-independence period, their influence has left an enduring legacy that has been explored and depicted in various literary works. This literature review examines how traditional leaders and chiefs have been portrayed in Gold Coast literature, focusing on their roles as custodians of culture, mediators of conflict, and agents of change.

Custodians of Culture

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